Carmella Commands
This was a new threat she had lately evolved, and it frightened her mother.
“Oh-ho! You forget English, do you? Then I bet your father he make you remember. I tell him when he comes home.”
“Oh, cara madre, don’t tell dad. He hits to hurt.”
“Ah-ha! Maybe you like it not that I tell him. Then what about it that you forget English?”
“Gee, mother! I’ll remember.”
“I’ll bet you do,” said Mrs. Coletta.
Mother and daughter went into the yellow cottage together—two generations a thousand years apart.
Tommaso was late in his home-coming that night, and Carmella studied his mood closely. There was still a question in her mind whether her mother would tell him that she had disobeyed. He had a way of questioning that seemed to command Maria to tell him everything.
Carmella was afraid of him—and he was the only individual in the world of whom she was afraid. It would not have been good for her, at thirteen, to know that he also was afraid of her; that he was afraid of all his English-chattering children. But chiefly afraid of Carmella, she being the oldest and the one on whom both parents relied to interpret their wishes to a world that did not speak their language.
Carmella spoke three separate tongues. In school she used a stilted, formal English, often putting “dis” for “this,” but closely following the textbooks in style.
[32]
